Bill Gates Says Boko Haram Slowing Anti-Polio Efforts in Nigeria

July 24 (Bloomberg) -- The insurgency by Boko Haram
militants in northern Nigeria is affecting a donor-backed target
to record no cases of polio in the West African nation by next
year, said billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates.

Authorities suspect gunmen from the Islamist group abducted
three health workers giving vaccinations in Bauchi state in
March and killed nine others in attacks on polio immunization
centers in the northern city of Kano last year.

“This Boko Haram disruption is the one real cloud on the
horizon where it means there are groups of children we’re not
able to get to,” Gates told reporters today in Ethiopia’s
capital, Addis Ababa. “So we’re hopeful that won’t get even
more intense.”

Boko Haram, which means “western education is a sin” in
the local Hausa language, has waged a five-year campaign to
impose Islamic law on Africa’s most populous nation. It has
focused its insurgency in the northeastern states of Borno, Yobe
and Adamawa and carried out attacks in Abuja, the capital.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supports the Global
Polio Eradication Initiative in three polio-endemic nations -
Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan - as well as other African
countries where there’s a risk the disease could spread.